


every night, before i fall asleep

by okaynowkiss



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Bunker, First Kiss, Fluff, Future Fic, Human Castiel, M/M, POV Dean Winchester, Post-Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 21:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1164969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynowkiss/pseuds/okaynowkiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>(We check in with our intrepid heroes six months after they've succeeded in closing off Hell. Celebrating post-hunt at a local bar, Sam meets a girl. And Dean and Cas...)</em> </p><p>She hands Cas a sheet of paper and a pencil and smiles at him. He returns the smile in the same kind way he always uses to deflect the flirtations of strangers who probably don’t mean anything by it, who probably just want to get his thrilling face turned their way for a few extra seconds.</p><p>Who wouldn’t want to know Cas if you saw him across a room? You get pulled toward him like a magnet. Dean’s about two inches from the guy and still he feels this electric current drawing him closer. Their knees are touching and neither of them moves away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	every night, before i fall asleep

It’s a rare thing for the three of them to hunt together.

In the relative calm after the business with the Gates of Hell, Sam and Dean are both restless, to opposite ends. Sam wants something but doesn’t seem to know what, so he goes quiet and solitary for days at a time, holed up in his room or the library or, being Sam, a different library at a second location. He still lives at the bunker, but even that feels like a ticking clock to Dean.

Hunting doesn’t cure him the way it does Dean, who is restless only to search out and kill the next monster that shows its ugly head, as fast and as ruthless and as perfectly as possible. And then even better.

Cas is pretty gung-ho to hunt, too, which is a gift Dean didn’t really let himself want. He’d just received it, undeserved and grateful, the first time Cas said yes, if someone needed their help of course he was coming. Even de-powered (grace locked up tight on one side of the Gates and Cas on the other, earthbound) he seems to feel the same pull that Dean does toward the work they do. Without Cas these last six months (was that really all it had been?) would’ve involved a lot more solo trips. A lot more of being alone in general, really, because didn’t they eat together, and hang out together every day even while they were between jobs?

It’s not like it’s bad between Sam and Dean, though. It’s better than Dean has any right to. The honesty between them in the wreckage of so many prior bad choices is why Sam won’t fake an interest in things like hunting. He wants space to do his own thing, and so Dean wants that for him too. And when Dean misses his brother while he’s on the road with Cas, he can call him up and Sam will be happy to hear his voice. So things aren’t bad at all.

And of course, if they actually need a third person, or if Sam’s interest is piqued for whatever reason, he’ll join them. These last few days they’ve all been in Missouri helping out a college friend of Sam’s he’s been talking to lately.

And after all of them hunt together, like tonight, there’s a special camaraderie in celebrating. They eat at their agreed-upon favorite restaurant in town (really a couple towns over from Lebanon, because there is nowhere actually in Lebanon to eat or see other humans), an Indian restaurant. It’s a no-frills, authentic kind of place, where they eat in the space of an hour and then go in search of a bar, full and happy.

It’s freezing out, really, but it doesn't dull the happy mood, as they wander around, turning down places where the crowds seem too young. They end up where they often end up, in front of the Rooster’s Nest, where Sam reads the chalkboard and says, “Look, it’s trivia night.”

Dean is 100% sure Cas is not familiar with the concept of bar trivia, but Cas shrugs and says, “Fine with me, I figured we’d come here anyway. It’s the only bar in town we’ve ever been to.”

Sam and Dean look at each other, brows equally lowered in confusion. “No, we’ve been to...” Sam begins, and they both laugh when he can’t think of a single other place they’ve actually set foot in.

The place is somewhere between sports bar and dive. It’s got enough grizzled old regulars to lend it credibility -- an idea Sam thinks is ridiculous (“Like the alcohol isn’t real at some places, or what?”) but one that Dean can’t let go of. He’s got this set of aesthetics ingrained in him down to the core, and at this point in his life he’s pretty sure he’s not going to make the switch to, like, wine bars or somewhere that grows the herbs for house cocktails on its roof garden. But -- and this is probably why they only go to the Rooster Nest -- it also attracts a late-twenties/early-thirties crowd of young professionals who like it for the location and for the cheap but decent drinks. And although Sam doesn’t go anywhere with the express intention of hitting on women, he does seem to like meeting people when it happens.

Dean claps Cas on the shoulder as they walk in. “Ready to win that trivia prize is for us?”

“Probably not,” Cas says as they weave around patrons and take seats at the end of the bar.

Sam must hear this exchange, because he leans forward from the far bar stool to see Dean in front of Cas, who’s sitting in the middle, and says, “Have you ever played? We’re definitely going to lose, it’s all really specific questions about sports scores and things like that.”

“Do we have to be on a team?” Dean asks him. “’Cause now I just want to beat you.”

Sam takes time out from ordering them a round of beers to flip him off.

“Actually, we need a fourth person, anyway,” says Cas, and Dean follows his eyes to a set of rules written on the wall up near the ceiling. Minimum four people to a team, max six.

Their bartender’s filling up glasses from the tap right in front of them, and she asks Cas, “Do you want to play? You have to sign up by nine, I’ll bring you guys a sheet.”

“Thank you,” Cas says, and his unfailing politeness makes Dean smile and look away. 

Once she’s left their beers with them, they clink their glasses together and get down to the business of drinking. And, after a crowd of friends joins them at the bar on the far side of Sam, and the space gets cramped enough that there’s some awkward jostling and apologies, and after realizing that the girl whose elbow hit Sam’s is very pretty and after watching her smile a whole lot, Dean gets down to the business of making fun of Sam’s attempts to flirt.

“Oh my god, we’re going to have to sit somewhere else, she can definitely hear you,” Sam says, making himself as small as possible, which is hilarious all on its own.

“I don’t know,” Cas says, catching Dean’s eye, “it’s very loud in here.” It is: happy din of chatter and clinking as the place fills up around them. 

It’s Dean in the last stool, nothing on his right but the hinged spot where the bar lifts up into a vertical door to let servers in and out. So when he comes back from the bathroom, there’s no legitimate reason for him to slide his stool a good foot to the left and say, “Hey, Cas, could you slide down some?”

Cas looks back from where he’s been talking to Sam, who doesn’t appear mortified at this exact moment. “Oh,” he says, when he sees Dean’s face, and there’s a fraught second where Dean knows Cas knows the trick he’s playing, and he might let him get away with it or he might not. “Sure,” he agrees. Dean can feel his cheeks stretch out from grinning at him.

Once Cas has moved way too close to Sam, it’s already too late for Sam to do anything about it. “Oh,” Sam says, because it’s Cas, and Sam’s instinct it to be polite to him. “Could you --”

But in the space Dean’s created at the bar on his other side, a guy had moved up and is waiting for someone to take a drink order, so he can’t move back.

“Sorry, Sam,” Cas says, and why is he so much better at not laughing during this than Dean is? It isn’t fair. “I don’t think I can --”

It works immediately and awesomely. Sam’s long legs are trapped under the bar so he has to move very carefully to avoid hitting the girl, who’s leaned her back against the bar, facing outward. And he doesn’t hit her, but he has to move over at least a little, so she pretty well barrels into him the next time she cracks up laughing at something.

“Oh, my gosh, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she says, hand over her mouth.

Cas puts his elbow on the bar, turned fully toward Dean and blocking them both from Sam, and by now he has his own hand over his mouth because he’s still keeping it together and not laughing but now it’s closer. Anyway Sam and the girl are still talking so they’re pretty well in the clear.

“Pleased with that, huh?” Dean asks him.

Cas raises his eyebrows at the challenge. “Yes.” His voice pitched low, just for Dean. “I did very well.” 

“Oh, yeah? You did, huh?” Sam moved over a little when Cas asked him to make room, but even so, Dean and Cas are sitting very close together now. 

The waitress reappears at that moment. “Another round?”

“Thank you,” Cas says.

“Oh!” She snaps her fingers. “Here. Five minutes.” She hands Cas a sheet of paper and a pencil and smiles at him. He returns the smile in the same kind way he always uses to deflect the flirtations of strangers who probably don’t mean anything by it, who probably just want to get his thrilling face turned their way for a few extra seconds.

Who wouldn’t want to know Cas if you saw him across a room? You get pulled toward him like a magnet. Dean’s about two inches from the guy and still he feels this electric current drawing him closer. Their knees are touching and neither of them moves away.

They do play trivia, over in the booths at the rear of the bar, for a few rounds. Dean would’ve been okay leaving that to the post-college crowd, honestly, but Kate is pleased when Sam asks her to join their team, and she sits on the same side of the booth as him, and Dean correctly estimates that they’ll want to split and head for somewhere more private before too long.

Anyway, it’s no great sacrifice to sit with Cas and join him in getting frustrated by the questions. (“Why is extra innings in a season even a record? Who cares?”) Kate, at least, can ballpark some of the stats that they would have no reasonable guess at, impressing Sam. And Cas, as Dean predicted, is an asset in a number of areas: he knows historical dates because he lived through the events, and he can just think out certain facts about the natural world. When Sam asks, “You’re sure for this one, otters are the animals with the densest fur?” Cas looks somewhat confused and says, “Well, obviously.”

They’re dead last out of nine teams when they leave, before the game is over. Sam’s fallen hard for the girl at classic Sam speed. He tells Dean vaguely not to worry about him, he’ll find his own way home. Dean has time for three final rapid-fire dirty jokes in the time Kate’s gone to say goodbye to the friends she came with, before Sam’s physically shoving Dean away to get rid of him before she comes back. He leaves with a final suspicious look at Dean, shielding Kate and steering her out the door.

Cas is looking especially dignified, probably to rub it in. “Ready?” he asks Dean, after they’ve paid the tab and given Sam and Kate a healthy head start.

“Successful night,” Dean says.

“Except in terms of winning.” Cas holds the door open for Dean as they head back out into the cold night.

“Yeah, well. Least Sam got a prize, huh?” Dean waggles his eyebrows and elbows Cas until Cas rolls his eyes, smiling and refusing to laugh.

 

+

 

Cas dresses like he’s from about two generations before this one. No high-tech fabrics (nothing shiny and nothing stuffed with down alternatives), no hats that don’t hold their own shape, and it’s wingtips at a minimum if they’re not on a job. As he and Dean head back across town together to where they parked, he’s got his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, shoulders up, a tension in his step so that he’s bouncing on the balls of his feet. He’s got a hat tucked in his back pocket but he isn’t wearing it, for no reason Dean can guess except so that his hair will blow around charmingly in the breeze, which, Dean’s internally rolling his eyes both at the concept and at himself for thinking it.

The shops are closed and the restaurants are thinking about it, but the bars are wide open and this is the main drag. Or as main as a drag in Kansas gets. They pass a bar with college kids spilling out onto the sidewalk, smoking and yelling happily. Cas sidesteps to the right a drunk redhead who barrels into their path and Dean takes the left, and they meet back up in the center of the sidewalk, still in step.

They’re passing a quieter but no less liquor-licensed establishment when Dean feels Cas stop. He turns back, two paces ahead, to look, and Cas is looking in the window of the place with his head ducked. Then he blinks up and catches Dean’s eye, and his face is sharp and happy with whatever this secret is. “Look.”

It’s L-shaped inside, formed around a bar, maybe three dozen intimate little tables in, not candlelight, but close enough. And toward the back there’s a really tall guy and a pretty girl, and it’s lucky the tall guy isn’t facing this way or he’d definitely spot them, because Dean and Cas are both staring like total creeps.

Inside the girl is talking and Sam is laughing, and a waitress brings over two glasses of what could be Scotch, so way to pick ‘em, Sam.

“How’d you spot ‘em?” Dean asks Cas, touching their shoulders together. He also means how did he himself miss them, and Cas probably knows that.

“Just luck.” And, after a moment: “We should probably...”

But neither of them moves. It’s so hard for Dean to tear his eyes away from this, a thing that can only exist when he isn’t around.

“I worry for Sam sometimes,” Cas says, eyes still on the couple, “that he won’t find it. This. He wants it so much I think it could be hard for him to let himself have it.”

Dean turns to Cas and leans against the glass window. Cas is still watching Sam and the girl, but it’s for show now: he’s doing it to avoid Dean’s eyes.

“I mean,” Cas says, his eyes flicking to Dean’s and away again, “I’m sure he will.” 

He still sucks at lying about this stuff, and it makes Dean laugh. “Nah, I get it,” Dean assures him, watching the tension in Cas’s lowered brows. “I, uh. I think about that too. But Sam, he’ll be fine. I mean, look at him --”

Dean looks back at them in the dimly lit bar, but Kate is now peering over at the window where Dean and Cas are standing, and it’s dark outside but she can probably see them well enough to know she’s being stared at. Sam turns to look at what she’s indicating, and Dean says, “Oh, shit,” grabbing Cas’s sleeve as Cas very quickly pretends they were already walking and shoves Dean in front of him further along the sidewalk. 

Out of sight of the window, once they’re walking along normally again, Cas raises his eyebrows at Dean, who’s still holding onto his elbow. “She probably didn’t see us,” he tries, but it’s weak.

Dean only laughs, and finally thinks to drop Cas’s arm. “She probably did, but Sam didn’t, so just deny it when he asks later, all right? We’ll be fine.”

“Mm,” Cas says noncommittally. 

Dean rolls his eyes. Knowing Cas, he’s going to fold as soon as Sam seems like he might bring it up. “So,” he says, and elbows Cas in the ribs, “worried about Sam’s future, huh?”

Cas looks at him sort of skeptically and shrugs. “I want him to be happy. Like you do.”

“You spend this much time concerned about whether I’ll be personally fulfilled?”

Cas looks annoyed by this, which is a little unfair. Dean only meant to tease him for mother-henning Sam.

“Well... I don’t know, Dean.”

If Cas wasn’t being sort of lofty about the whole thing -- like considering Dean’s future is beneath him -- Dean might let it go. As it is, he can’t help talking. “Aw, come on. You want Sam to find his Disney princess but not me?”

And before the words are all the way out of his mouth he knows it’s the wrong thing to say, even if he can’t quite put together why. Dean knows without Cas even reacting -- and he doesn’t react at all, really, because Cas can be unnervingly stoic when he wants to, however good Dean might believe he is at reading him. Dean feels it in his own throat, though, that he’s made Cas sad.

“Do you worry about that, Dean?” Cas asks.

“Uh,” Dean says. He doesn’t elaborate on that, and he has to look behind him again, because Cas has stopped, this time because they’ve reached their parking space and Dean hasn’t noticed. Cas it waiting there at the back of the car, hands in his pockets, scanning up and down the street like he’s making sure they’re not being tailed. Dean stalls throughout hurrying back to the driver’s side door and unlocking her. He clears his throat and starts the car, and risks a glance at Cas, who’s pulling off his gloves in his lap and isn’t looking at Dean.

He wants to say something that will make Cas happy again; he wants to not have said it; he wants to not be an asshole.

A few turns into the drive, Cas surprises him by breaking the silence. “I was checking the stores when I put away our gear, we’re almost out of lighter fluid.”

“Yeah? Uh, okay, I’ll grab some tomorrow.”

The strange moment has passed, mostly. It’s obvious that Cas is being decent by changing the subject for him (a kindness Dean doesn’t deserve). He wants to say something to take back the Disney princess line but everything he comes up with sounds too serious: _You know I don’t want that. Come on, when was the last time I so much as took a girl home, let alone went on a date like Sam? It’s not on my radar._

Maybe Cas isn’t as hurt as he thought. The guy’s a little subdued, sure, but why would he really be upset, anyway? Just because Dean’s implied he wants to find a girl to marry...

 

+

 

On any other night, they might stand in the kitchen together eating cold chicken right out of the tupperware. Tonight, the mood in the bunker is less companionable. “Goodnight,” Cas says, shrugging out of his coat as he heads toward his room, leaving Dean standing inside the garage entrance.

“Might see if I can get the telescope up and running tomorrow,” Dean throws out at his retreating back. He has no such plans, but he _could_. 

Cas turns and raises his eyebrows. “Okay,” he says levelly.

Half-desperately, Dean rushes to elaborate. “If nothing’s going on. Or, did you want to start looking at those runes for Garth?” He’s babbling, and it must be obvious, because the deal with the runes is that everyone -- even Sam -- has been putting that project off for weeks because it’s tedious and not remotely urgent.

“No, I wasn’t planning on it,” Cas says. And with a little nod, he turns out of the room.

Dean takes off his coat mechanically. He looks at it there in his hand, willing it to make sense, because he has the absurd feeling that he’s never seen it before. It’s warm and forest green and he wears it every day lately, since it’s been so cold. Unless they’re working -- it’s practical but it’s _nice_ , too, and he doesn’t want it covered in, at best, blood. He got it a month and a half ago, and the first time he traded it out for canvas on a hunt, Cas asked him where it was, then seemed relieved to hear it was safe at home. 

It’s a coat. There’s nothing to make sense of. He opens the closet door and puts it away. His brother’s coats are here too, and Cas’s. Cas could’ve hung his coat up here tonight, but he took it to his room, instead.

Dean has this weird, hard-to-describe blank feeling: it’s like he’s been on a train moving steadily for a long time, and he didn’t notice the train stopping but now it’s stopped, and he’s forgotten what it feels like to walk or stand or do anything without that undercurrent of forward movement.

 

+

 

For some reason, even though it’s late and he’s tired, Dean is reluctant to go to bed. He sits at his desk with a book open but has to go back and reread the same paragraph so many times that he shoves it away. He could go watch TV, but something about the speed with which Cas walked away earlier makes him want to hide out.

He does know that this is about him and Cas. He’s not completely dumb.

It’s serious, between the two of them. It’s serious in an end-of-the-world, end-of-our-lives, last-night-on-earth way, where whatever the doomsday scenario is, Dean wants Cas next to him when the sky falls.

And also, besides wanting it, he assumes it’s what’s going to happen. It’s hard to imagine any future for himself that doesn’t have Cas in it, with his determined voice and capable hands.

But in some of those futures, couldn’t Dean also have a wife? Does the thought of him having a girl negate the idea of him and Cas being the great friends that they are?

Because the thing is, there’s this pretend woman that he didn’t consciously invent who pops up in his head when he needs to imagine one. She’s a dark-haired amalgam of Robin, Cassie, and Lisa, basically. Although she’s also pretty much formless. Honestly, the only time he calls the pretend woman to mind is when someone, usually a stranger, brings it up.

“Your wife must be thrilled, you doing all the shopping,” from the smiling elderly checkout woman at the grocery store.

So the image will flash through his thoughts: a beautiful girl standing in a kitchen with sunlight from the window falling across her white apron. His pretend wife.

Only, she’s not even his. Because he’s never in this imaginary kitchen; it’s just that detached, non-existent wife. The thought makes him vaguely sad: he feels a little responsible for this character he created and then orphaned.

So this idea he’s had, that deep down he imagines himself with a wife, it’s not true. In his imagined future it’s really just him and Cas, and Sam with a pretend wife of his own. And just to drive the point home, it’s immediately easy to picture Sam next to his own Mrs. Winchester, leaning against their kitchen island talking about their opinions on Syria, or whatever.

When he finally makes himself get into bed, it’s to stare at the ceiling for a long time. Cas is his closest friend. There is no one as similar to Dean as him. And separate from their camaraderie, there’s also the other thing.

So a couple times, they almost -- at least Dean thinks they might’ve.

There was that night they were reading all this crap in the Men of Letters’ notes, accounts of cases, looking for a pattern they’d missed about ghost possession, and they were arguing. It was so late and they were crunched for time and they both thought they had it and both thought the other guy was so off-the-rails wrong about it, so they were right up in each other’s faces. Cas was pacing, going, “Dean, if there was a geographic barrier, the cases would have to be in proximity to something --” and he was shoving the text he was looking at into Dean’s chest, pressing it there, and Dean grabbed it and flipped it back onto the couch, rolling his eyes at him, and they just kept getting closer together even while Dean was going on: “Why bother linking them by the fact that they’re Men of Letters? It’s pointless, long as their own notes are all we got, we need something we can actually work with!” Cas pressed his hand to Dean’s chest like he wanted to shove him and also didn’t want to. Dean grabbed his forearm. And then they froze and Dean -- doesn’t know. He wanted to so much right then. To grab him and --. But then he knew he’d looked too long at his eyelashes, at his lips, that it must be so obvious -- but there was something there, there was. But he didn’t want to mess up -- that is, he couldn’t -- so he freaked out some, and backed off and said something dumb. And the moment passed, like they always do.

And a few weeks ago: a motel surrounded by cornfields and ice and the big Iowa sky, Dean’s blood soaking through the comforter. Cas knelt at his feet sewing up his skin and bandaging him, shoving Dean’s protesting hands away gently. In truth he could barely talk for exhaustion and pain and a fat lip, but when Cas let him lie down and then returned to clean the blood from his body with a damp cloth, Dean said, “Ah. Sorry about earlier. Should’ve realized he wasn’t alone.”

“It happens. I’m glad you’re okay.”

His temple was cut, so Cas pushed Dean’s hair back with his hand to clean it off. The touch was so warm and sweet that Dean, who had been as motionless as possible, grabbed Cas’s hand to keep it there and pressed his cheek against it, eyes shut tight. Cas let him stay like that for a minute. Neither of them moved at all. And then: “Hold on, all right?” Cas stood and stripped the covers back from the other side of the bed. “Can you move over?” Dean made a face at him. “Dean, you’re cold.” So he shifted over and let Cas tuck him under the covers. He was so close to sleep that when he remembers the next part now, it seems like a dream. But Cas knelt on the floor beside the bed once Dean’s head was on the pillow, and he pressed his cheek against Dean’s forehead and touched Dean’s hair until he was really, blissfully asleep.

Every night since then while Dean’s falling asleep, he relives that in his head.

And there’s more, too, if he really thinks about it. Hands on arms, all the time. Shoulder punches and kicks to the ankle underneath a diner booth. A battlefield telepathy where they can agree on a formation with the barest eye contact. Cas teaching him Enochian patiently (more versatile and more powerful than Latin for many off-the-cuff uses), in the car and motel rooms, and the quiet way Cas looks at him when he gets it right. The first time he made a joke to Cas in the language, Cas was so happy it still makes Dean half choked up to remember it.

And, the flip side of their ease with each other: the awkwardness. Cas will buy him pie while he’s out and then pretend to forget to give it to him, even though Dean can _see_ him thinking about it. And last week Dean was comparing notes with Cas on the best way to disarm someone holding a knife, and it had involved putting his arms around Cas from behind. Sam walked in and Dean stepped away too quickly, guiltily, and he can still picture Sam’s face in the shameful second after it happened. The sparring was legitimate, no ulterior motive of being close, but it didn’t matter. 

But every uncomfortable moment and every accidental hurt feeling between them, they’ve always passed easily enough. Whatever’s happening right now -- which is probably nothing, anyway -- they’ll get through it.

 

+

 

In the morning, he stands at his door and listens for awhile, to make sure it’s quiet. (Sam texted last night: he and Kate are going to brunch this morning and he’ll be back in the afternoon. So no one else should be home except Cas.)

Whenever Dean sees Cas next, he’s going to have to say something. He’s already waited way too long, really; he should’ve done it last night. And at the same time, because he’s a real prize, he wants to put it off as long as possible.

The red light on the coffee machine in the kitchen is sort of reassuring. Cas already woke up and made coffee, so things aren’t totally fucked. For example, Cas hasn’t moved out in the night after realizing he’s been wasting his time with this friendship, as one of Dean’s more extreme fears went.

Dean has toast and coffee while standing up near the sink, eyes flicking frequently to the doorway, like a deer ready to bolt at the first snapped branch. No one shows up. He dresses for the cold and shrugs into the green coat -- presumably Cas is in his room or the library, somewhere Dean hasn’t walked though, by total coincidence -- and runs through his shopping list mentally. He would’ve liked to check the stores himself (not that Cas wouldn’t have done it yesterday when he noticed the lighter fluid, but just to be thorough) but that would mean passing the library and he can’t bring himself to do it.

Lighter fluid, ground beef, cereal. He shoulders open the heavy garage door. Gun oil, they’re still good on eggs probably, maybe sugar...

“Dean?” Cas’s head appears over top of one of the motorcycle stalls, like he’s just sat up.

“Um.” Dean looks at the Impala -- is there any way he can just split? -- then walks over to Cas, who’s brushing off his pants as he stands. There are hand tools laying on the ground around him; he’s been working on one of the motorcycles that doesn’t run. “Hey.”

Cas seems a little lost, too, and Dean wonders if he’s stumbled on the place Cas was hiding to avoid _him_. “I think it might just need oil to run,” Cas says.

His friendliness embarrasses Dean. Today, like last night, Cas is able to push through the awkward impasse when Dean is not. “No kidding, you got it working?”

“We’ll see. But yes, I think so.”

“That’s cool, man.” He means it: Cas is so good at this, at coaxing objects back to life, and even the loyal car-owner that he is, Dean has to admit he wouldn’t mind taking a ride on one of these bikes. “Do we have whatever kind of oil you want? I’m going to the hardware store anyway, so if you want anything I could...”

“Well,” Cas says and surveys the area around his feet. “Do you mind if I come with you?”

Something about it doesn’t come out easy. Cas is asking like he’s prepared to argue against a no. So maybe he’s planning to have his own talk with Dean? Maybe he wasn’t hiding in the garage but waiting, expecting Dean to slip out. And looking at him in his grease-stained shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his hands on his hips as he considers the motorcycle, Dean knows that he _can’t_ ruin this. If he lost Cas’s friendship, he doesn’t really want to think about what his life would look like.

“Yeah,” Dean nods, “come on.”

“Let me get a coat.” Once Cas disappears, Dean uses the time to simultaneously psych himself up and calm himself down. _It’s fine. Get it together, ‘cause you can’t not do this._

The garage door opens on a clear day, sunny and freezing, the light soft because it’s still early. They’re only turning off their own street when Cas says, “Dean, about last night.”

“Ah, Cas --”

“I was, well, I didn’t mean to be rude --”

“How were you rude?”

“Because, if you wanted that -- to find someone and spend your life with her. I’d support you.”

How did this go so wrong so quickly? “Cas, that’s not --” Dean checks over his shoulder and pulls the car over. “You know I don’t want that.”

Cas juts his chin out, stubborn. “No, I don’t know that.” 

“So I’m telling you I don’t. I’m not like Sam with this, man. I don’t want anything past what I have.” 

Cas purses his lips. “What does that mean,” he says, no inflection.

Dean shrugs. “I want to hunt until I’m too old to do it anymore, and I wouldn’t take anybody else for a partner.”

Cas nods once, quick, in agreement or out of instinct. But it’s clear he isn’t making the leaps Dean might have hoped for, from what’s Dean’s saying to what Cas has to know he means.

Dean rolls his eyes, annoyed at himself for how hard this is coming. “So, okay then. So what about you?”

“I want something else,” Cas says gently. “Dean, we can stay like we are and I wouldn’t mind. We can. And I... don’t want to make you uncomfortable. But I want to tell you -- you know what I’d do for you. There’s no sacrifice I wouldn’t make. There’s nothing that would be a sacrifice, if I did it for you.”

“ _Cas--_ ” It’s getting hard to breathe and Dean wants him to stop. The way he must look, eyes huge -- he can tell because Cas is looking kind of guilty. But also determined.

“Dean.” Cas seems bolstered by the fact that Dean is losing it. Like it’s helping him keep it together, to be strong for both of them. He takes Dean’s wrist in his hand, where’s Dean’s got his forearm resting defensively. Fingertips under the cuff of Dean’s jacket. “You have to know this is forever. You already know that. All I’m trying to tell you is that sometimes I want to hold your face in my hands.”

Dean’s mouth twists to the side, lips pressed together too hard. He’s trying to shake his head _no_ because if he doesn’t he’s going to cry or kiss him.

“Do you understand?” Cas says, tugging at his wrist, and then: “There’s no reason to -- Dean. It’s all right. I want to tell you that at night, if I’m cold? I think of you lying next to me.”

“Stop,” Dean says, voice wrecked. He takes Cas’s collar in his hands and their knees knock together. Dean kisses him straight on the lips. Cas pulls him in after and holds him, and Dean lets his head rest in the crook of Cas’s neck until he’s ready.

He pulls back; their hands still hold each other. “Cas, I was gonna say, though. I didn’t mean to say what I said last night, to give you the idea I was... waiting for something to come along. I guess you knew it wasn’t even true. Still, must have sucked to think I didn’t get that. I don’t know what to say, even, except: You know I’m an idiot. But at least I know you’re my -- best friend sounds dumb; it’s not even that. You’re my friend. The one of ‘em I get in this life, you know? Hell, this life plus all the other places we’ve been. You were... a lucky break.” Dean shrugs at the end, an apology that he isn’t doing a better job at this.

“Well, it wasn’t as much luck as intent, really.” Cas has gone all soft in the eyes too, but he’s making this joke about it to help them both out. “I mean, when I descended into Hell and --”

“Shut up, all right?” How much of a relief it is to get to punctuate this by squeezing Cas’s hand. “I gotta make up for a couple years of not doing this. So listen, that stuff you said, uh, that you want. I do too. You know when I got cut up by those werewolves in Iowa, and you stitched me up? And you --” He presses his palm to Cas’s forehead, just for a second, just long enough to let Cas lean into it and smile at him. “And I fell asleep like that. I never fall asleep now without thinking about that.”

“Oh,” Cas says, about as close to tears as Dean has ever seen him.

“So I think that’s it. That’s all I got.”

Cas asks, “What now?”

Which is a good question in general, but for right now... “You wanna get breakfast?”

“You haven’t eaten?”

“...Lunch?”

“It’s eight-thirty a.m.”

“All right.” Dean can’t stop smiling. He releases Cas’s hand and pats him on the leg before he goes to put the car in drive. “Breakfast it is.”

 

(the end)


End file.
